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The BMJ has been championing evidence based medicine (EBM) since the 1996 editorial from David Sackett, Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't set out the tenets of the movement - as he explained, "It's about integrating individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence".

Learn about evidence based medicine, debate its future, and find resources to help you apply it in your research and practice

In June 2014The BMJ launched a new strategy to promote patient partnership. It took this step because it sees partnering with patients, their families, carers, advocacy groups, and the public as an ethical imperative, which is essential to improving the quality, safety, cost effectiveness, and sustainability of healthcare. The strategy brings landmark changes to The BMJ’s internal processes. It was “co –produced” with the members of its new international patient advisory panel, which was set up to help steer the implementation of the strategy.

Latest campaigns

The BMJ has long championed the wellbeing of doctors, both for their own sake and the sake of their patients. We have pulled together an online collection of articles published in the past few years, including recent articles on the importance of staff engagement, how to deal with a bullying colleague and optimising sleep for night shifts. Future articles will look at the issues affecting doctors’ physical and psychological health, both in and outside of work.

In October 2014 The BMJ called on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency on climate change. Putting climate change at the top of the list of things to worry about is hard when faced with the daily challenges of clinical care, but it poses a greater risk to human health than either communicable of non-communicable disease.

Hidden clinical trial data are systematically undermining doctors’ abilities to prescribe treatment with confidence. A whole range of widely used drugs across all fields of medicine have been represented as safer and more effective than they are, endangering people’s lives and wasting public money. As of January 2013, the BMJ will no longer publish any trial of drugs or devices where the authors do not commit to making the relevant anonymised patient level data available, upon reasonable request.

Following an editorial “Statins and The BMJ” by Fiona Godlee in August 2014 , we said we would contact the principal investigators of all the relevant trials and publish their responses. The BMJ has identified 34 trials and we want to see how easy it is to collect data on the harms.

Corruption is the very antithesis of patient centred care. Driven by greed, those in power divert crucial resources away from patients in need, which results in poor quality of care and worsening health outcomes. It is an international problem and no health system is free from it. The BMJ campaign aims to draw attention to corrupt practices in health systems internationally and stimulate discussion on underlying causes. We aspire to awaken the global conscience of doctors and foster initiatives to push for change.